Saturday, April 23, 2011

Achieving Excellence

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Achieving excellence - what an excellent way to put things into perspective.

You see, I have more than 10 cats, and the number is growing, either by births or simply plucking the young ones from the streets.

As keeping pets is a full-time job, the tasks of looking after them are equally divided by the people in the household. But, I'm not going to talk about how excellent the tasks being carried out, or rather, how excellent the cats are doing right now - except at making more kittens, sighs ... - but, rather at the rate some organization are going at collecting the garbage.

We residents are equipped with garbage bins, one for every household. And mine is a heavy made-from-cement garbage bin, a bit small to house all wastes. Collections are made every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. For the past many years, this roll-call left some bitter tastes in the residents' mouths. One thing for sure, the no-show of the garbage trucks on the dedicated day.

So, wastes collected from Saturday, Sunday and Monday are not collected on Monday. They sit there begging to be collected on Wednesday. And finally the sound of the truck comes by leisurely on late Thursday afternoon, filled to the brim with five-day old smells and what-nots.

By this time, I think you are able to visualise the adverse effect of the situation we are facing:

1. The sight of the garbage (mine of course in bio-degradable blue garbage bag, ready to de-compose in three days) bulging out from the bin - Not so bad;

2. Some is given a special treatment to sit outside the garbage bin, under the shade of the tanjung tree - A disturbing sight in the early morning;

3. Some wild dogs or wild boars (yes, you read it right) had a party on one peaceful mid-night and the next morning, rubbish - yes, you are damn right there - cats' wastes - strewn all over the kerb and road. - A sight not to behold, yuck;

4. (Read again) some wild dogs or wild boars bla bla bla - A smell that last a lifetime, sigh ....

So, what say you if an organization were to achieve excellence in delivering their services to the tax-payers?

Welcome to my simple life, All.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Welcoming Myself To One Very Old Turf

Hi All,

Sometime in the year 2009, somebody urged me to join Facebook, and I did. And man, I can say that I'm hooked. Though I can say too, that I do Facebook "a little", compared to the bigger chunk of the world population who do Facebook "a lot", or, have adopted Facebook as their "way of life".

Thus this blog, left idle for God knows, and I dare not count the days I didn't log in, If I were to count, regrets would surely creep in, as it is obvious that I may be missing a lot on the joy of blogging.

But, it's not too late to get my tired fingers (it's another half an hour to midnight) to make love to the tired keyboard and jingle few alphabets. At least, things lurking at the back of my mind that need to be "dealt with" are now becoming more real and, well, dealt with.

I remember sometime back too, I had purchased a book on blogging. Not that I wanted to seriously jump onto the bandwagon and dreamt of earning six figure income from blogging. Blogging seemingly has becoming an in-thing, an arena where people freely discuss their interests, champion a cause, share some experience, be good with something and spread the goodness, or maybe say few bad things, or simply be better at story-telling.

To be either one of the "experts" listed above, is also not my mission. A simple person, I would rather talk or, err, write about simple things, read by simple people who lead simple lives.

My jottings may touch somebody's heart someday, or never, but then again, this may be another side of me that most people don't know, most people think not worth knowing, most people think impossible, most people think "no way!", most people think "she does what?" and I could go on and on.

Nevertheless, even if I may come back in another two years' time from today, I have at least something to show my grandchildren. They may be able to understand what's going on in my 49-year old mind in 2011 and get if journaled.

Or, when congkak is no longer displayed at the museum, it doesn't seem too remote to them in 2033.

Welcome to my simple life, All.